In today's reading, Mookie Spitz dives into the 18th section of Jonnie Fazoolie & the Transfinite Reality Engine, featuring a feverish stretch that finds Jonnie teetering on the razor’s edge between cosmic brilliance and total crackpot despair.
Here in a Cancun casino lobby — wired on speed, broke as ever, and chasing half-baked startup schemes — Jonnie's mind runs laps around itself. He dreams up an “infiniverse-jumping machine” pitched somewhere between a sci-fi jackpot and a bizarre sexual fantasy, all while trying not to pass out from paranoia or regret. The mood is Fazoolie at his most raw: careening from meth-induced mania to existential nausea, lusting after a dominatrix physicist while conjuring quantum nonsense he knows he can’t deliver.
Yet beneath the manic comedy, a deeper bite stings. What drives a man to scheme for the impossible instead of fixing his actual mess? Why is he more comfortable getting humiliated by a fantasy mistress than facing his empty bank account or hollow life? Jonnie's “tussle of a hustle” is more than a scam — it’s an allegory of how we chase delusions to avoid confronting ourselves, how we’d rather dream of interdimensional kicks than change our own busted real world circumstances.
Tune in for Mookie’s sardonic take, a few philosophical rabbit holes, and plenty of cringey, hilarious Fazoolie self-sabotage. If you’ve ever plotted a ridiculous shortcut when what you needed was a hard look in the mirror, you’ll find something painfully familiar here.
The Novel
Jonnie Fazoolie & the Transfinite Reality Engine
First Reading
Share this post